“The discarded computer printouts represent an insensitive and pseudo society, the backdrop in which life’s traumatic experiences are played out,” says K P Thomas. The self-taught artist has made a habit of using metaphoric mediums like discarded envelops and dot matrix printouts to enable his flights to an inner realm while bundling out money from behind the cash counters in banks.
“My career as a banker began and ended with the stint in the cashier’s cabinet. I preferred the seclusion of the walled cabin if not the freedom of living as an artist. The printouts became my canvas and the drawings I would make on them were my brief engagements with artistic intincts,” says Thomas who had once been honoured with the distinction of being the youngest recipient of the Lalithkala Akademy award.
The printed papers are infused with a burst of colours and images, flights to fantasy worlds in some and representations of social, philosophical and moral concerns in others. “The colours are a spontaneous expression of the freedom in which these 52 works have been done – after my retirement in June 2011,” he laughs.
The print on the papers lend a unique texture to the paintings. Thomas has used a variety of mediums to bring the desired the effect on the basic images done in water colour. Charcoal, pastels and ink define the flowing images, “deliberately contained within the space of the printouts available for my experiment”, he says.
The theme that runs through the works is the myriad expressions of woman – the trusting innocence of an adolescent beside the phony figure of the male counterpart, the tigress who has learned the rules of the game, the tribal beauty from Mananthavadi where Thomas was born and brought up and so on.
The on-going exhibition at the Vyloppilli Samskrithi Bhavan will conclude on October 27.